B-Schools beat recession blues to register good placements

INDIA’S growth story may have taken a couple of serious knocks in the recent past, but for the students of the country’s top management schools, there’s been no slowdown. As the annual placements conclude across the country, B-Schools who have numbers to share have good news to give.

FMS-2012 Placements

The placements this year have been “better” and the new graduates have benefited from an “impressive array of emerging opportunities”. At the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi, the entire batch of 233 MBA and MBA (Management Services) students found jobs with various domestic and multinational companies. Two FMS students, incidentally, stood out from the crowd by rejecting higher-paying corporate sector jobs to accept offers from the Reserve Bank of India.“Our students were offered more openings in marketing and sales this year,” said FMS Placement Convener Mala Sinha.

The institute’s summer internship programme has also met with resounding success. The mood at FMS naturally is upbeat. “Despite concerns about recession and the increase in the present MBA batch size, we have been successful in attracting a larger number of companies for summer placements this year,” Sinha said. Though details of the salaries offered will emerge only by the end of this week, as FMS is still in the process of consolidating data, the number of companies that visited its campus went up to 127 from 97 last year.

FORE School of Management 2012 Placements

Even FORE School of Management (FSM), Qutab Institutional Area, had good news to share. It reported the doubling of the highest salary offered from INR 14.5 lakh to INR 32 lakh.

The fear of recession has made no obvious difference. “Our placement levels this year were better than what we achieved in 2011,” said FSM Director Jitendra K. Das. The fear of an impending recession seems to be misplaced. The companies came and everything went as planned,” Das added. The average salary offered at the school was INR 7.75 lakh.

XLRI Jamshedpur 2012 Placements

For XLRI, Jamshedpur, it was a problem of plenty. Its batch of 235 students received 284 placement offers from the 73 companies that visited its campus. “Our placements concluded in record time this year, with 98 per cent of the students getting jobs within the first three days,” said an ebullient Fr. E. Abraham, Director, XLRI. At XLRI, global investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs made 12 offers in the fields of asset management and investment research.

Consulting too emerged as a major job provider with a number of established firms recruiting students for international and domes- tic strategy roles. Internet companies also created a buzz on the campus.

Facebook, Amazon, Flipkart and Redbus were there in strength to spot the brightest and the best. The highest domestic salary at XLRI was INR 40 lakh; the highest international salary offer stood at INR 61.8 lakh.

IIM-A 2012 Placements

IIM-Ahmedabad, the country’s most sought- after management school, reported that its placement process is still on. “We are yet to conclude our placements and we are not in a hurry to do so because we wish to help both the companies and the candidates find the right match,” said Saral Mukherjee, Associate Professor and Chairperson, Placement Committee, IIM-A. The institute’s officials are unwilling to part with statistics on the number of candidates who have been placed — the final audit is yet to be done — they maintain there hasn’t been any dip in the number of companies visiting the campus.“We have almost the same figure as last year for the number of companies recruiting our students,” Mukherjee said. “A clearer picture will emerge once we release the placement report after the final audit.” The audit report will be finalised three months after the March 24 convocation ceremony.

Going by the market trend, the report will only have good news to share.